Plastics
There’s an excerpt from Mark Harris’ Pictures at a Revolution, in the new Entertainment Weekly on the making of Mike Nichols’ classic 1967 romcom The Graduate (on which principal photography lasted almost 100 days).
After the movie wrapped, Hoffman had returned to New York City and the cocoon of his former anonymous life. He survived for a few months on the $4,000 he had saved while working on the picture and then registered for unemployment, lining up on East 13th Street every week to pick up a $55 check while he looked for acting jobs.
Anne Bancroft obituary.
Unrelated: Beck - Live on KCRW (12/16/00)
that really was a golden age for movies; the colors were brighter, cinematography was crisper, etc.
Content wise, I’m on the other side. I saw this movie recently actually, I think it was on HDNet. The flick was thin. I’m sorry, I just thought it was. The plot was so weird-60’s.
More interesting (to me) is the story of the source novel’s author, Charles Webb.
“Webb declined an inheritance from his father and sold the film rights for The Graduate for £14,000, missing out on any share of the £60 million gross of the original film the rights of which are now owned by the French media company Canal Plus. The couple gave away their tickets to the premiere and donated the book’s copyright to the Anti-Defamation League. ‘If I hadn’t sold the rights, I don’t think it would have had this iconic status and it would probably have been forgotten by now,’ Webb said.
They also sold their wedding presents back to their guests, gave away four successive houses and put all their possessions on a lawn and told locals to come and get them.
They lived on the breadline, taking menial jobs as cleaners, cooks and fruit-pickers, working at K-Mart and living in a shack.”
That’s just the tip of the iceberg with Webb. Odd as all hell, but in a good way.
the QoTSA poster is very vintage Penguin paperback or RCA records. ish.
i can just hear a Diablo Cody character using the phrase “Frosty Ice Co.” as shorthand for something surreal. its gonna happen, watch.
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Fantastic article. There’s no way anyone else could’ve made the Graduate come to life the way Hoffman did.